By Professor Glen Hvenegaard
University of Alberta (gth@ualberta.ca)
Updated January 6, 2022
Birds are fascinating creatures. As a group, they offer amazing diversity, beautiful songs, amazing colors, and interesting behaviour. Bird watching, birding, and bird study are growing in popularity, offering ways to connect to nature. People watch birds to appreciate unique characteristics of birds, to socialize, to have friendly competition with each other, to conserve birds, and to conduct research.
Around the world, there are about 10,000 species of birds. North America hosts over 900, Canada over 600, and Alberta over 400 species. Enjoying birds is easy. Go walking with binoculars and a field guide, listen to birds singing, join a nature club, or set up a bird feeder. One can simply appreciate the special qualities of birds, but if you want to dig deeper, it helps to identify birds according to species. You can identify birds based on characteristics that separate one species from another. For example, focus on bird size, shape, color, behaviour, flight pattern, sounds, preferred habitat, range, timing, and relative abundance. Start slow with some of the more common birds around your home, and then build up your repertoire as you travel to other places. Soon you will recognize birds with just a glance or having heard a brief sound.
The birdlife of Stoney Creek is particularly diverse, spectacular, and abundant. Stoney Creek valley is part of the aspen parkland ecoregion, one of Alberta’s most varied regions for birds. The Stoney Creek contains wetlands, riparian areas, aspen forests, patches of shrubs, native prairie, badlands, cropland, and urban areas all support bird diversity.